U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,174 discloses a method for determining the intrinsic or inherent viscosity of a solute in solution with a solvent. In one embodiment, a gel permeation column separates a multicomponent sample into its separate solute components, each of which is subject to a separate viscosity determination.
In some applications, it may be desirable to separate a multicomponent sample into its separate solute components based on partitioning and chemical interaction, rather than molecular size. In such cases, the gel permeation column described in the above-identified application could be replaced, for example, with a column containing a packing material capable of binding each component of the multicomponent sample. The solvent flowing through the column could then be changed continuously with respect to some relevant chemical property, causing each component of the solute to elute sequentially under desired conditions of analysis time and experimental resolution. Under such circumstances, the viscosity of the solvent may, itself, vary from an initial to a final value, causing a varying "background" against which the solute viscosity is measured. It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for measuring the intrinsic or inherent viscosity of a solute in solution with such a solvent of varying viscosity.